p 



LD 1262 
1830 
Copy 1 



AN 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORB THE 



PHILOLEXIAN AND PEITHOLOGIAN SOCIETIES, 



August 2, 1830 ; 



ON THE EVENING PRECEDING THE ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT 



COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 



By GULIAN C/VERPLANCK, 

ONE OF THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW-YORK. 



Quid ni ego magnorunf-virorum et imagines habeam incitamenta virtutis et nata- 
les celebrem? Quid ni fibs honoris causa appellem? Seneca Epist. 



NEW- YORK 1 
G. & C. & H. CARVILL. 



j 



1 






AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



PHILOLEXIAN AND PEITHOLfrGIAN SOCIETIES, 



OF 

COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 



AN 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
PHILOLEXIAN AND PEITHOLOGIAN SOCIETIES, 

August 2, 1830 ; 
ON THE EVENING PRECEDING THE ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT 

OF 

COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 



[JLIAN Cnr 



By GULIAN OTERPLANCR, 

ONK OF THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW-YORK. 



Quid ni ego magnorum virorum et imagines habeam incitamenta virtutis et nata- 
les celebrem? Quid ni illos honoris causa appellem ? Seneca Epist. 



NEW- YORK : J 
G. & C. & H. CARVILL. 




1830. 






V s #° 



LUDW1G & TOLEFREE, PRINTERS, 

Corner of Greenwich and Veseystreets, New-York. 



<v 



x 






v 



Columbia College, > 



^ . August 3d, 1830. 

"^ Hon. Gulian C. Verplanck. 



Sir,—- 

We have been appointed a committee on the part 
of the Philolexian and Peithologian Societies, to communicate 
to you the following resolutions, passed at a joint meeting of 
the Societies, held August 2d, 1830, at which Hugh Maxwell, 
Esq. presided, and William Inglis, Esq. acted as Secretary. 

" Resolved, That the thanks of the Philolexian and Peitholo- 
gian Societies be presented to the Hon. Gulian C. Verplanck, 
for the eloquent and classical address which he has this evening 
delivered before them. 

" Resolved, That the committee of arrangements inform Mr. 
Verplanck of the foregoing resolution, and request of him a 
copy of his address for publication. 

We are, Sir, with great respect, 

Your obedient servants, 

Benjamin Drake, ^ 

J. H. Hobart Hawes, > Committee. 

William H.,Milnor, ) 

Hon. G. C. Verplanck. 



AN ADDRESS, &c 



The historian Polybius had examined the institutions of 
the Roman republic, her laws, her customs, her military dis- 
cipline, and her public policy, with the jealous curiosity of a 
conquered Greek, and the enlightened sagacity of a statesman 
and a philosopher. Himself a distinguished actor in most of 
the important transactions of Rome's history during his event- 
ful times — in turns the opponent in arms or in negociation, 
and the chosen friend of her greatest men, he had familiarly 
studied the very elements of Roman character, and was ena- 
bled to trace in it the springs and causes of the nation's 
greatness. 

In a remarkable passage of his history, he has pointed out 
one ancient usage of the commonwealth as, in his opinion, 
eminently efficacious in forming the character of her youth, 
inflaming them with magnanimous desires and generous sen- 
timents, and fitting them for the toils, the duties, and the glo- 
ries of freemen. This powerful agent he found in the public 
honours reverently and constantly paid to their illustrious 
dead. 



It was not merely that the funeral rites of every citizen 
who had deserved well of his country were solemnly attended 
by the whole body of the people, who, with intense and re- 
spectful interest, listened in silence to the praises of his virtues 
and public services, pronounced in the Forum by the most 
eloquent of his kinsmen or friends ; but it was moreover that 
on such, as well as on other fitting occasions, the venerable 
images of a long line of yet older patriots and heroes, who in 
former years had illustrated the family of the deceased, were 
again brought before the public view, decorated with the robes 
and surrounded with the trophies of their well- won honours, 
while their great deeds were recited and their virtues extolled, 
and thus their memory kept fresh and living from generation 
to generation. 

" By these means," says the historian, " the praise and the 
fame of excellent men and their deeds are continually renew- 
ed ; the names and the exploits of those who have deserved 
well of their country are made familiar to the people, and 
handed down to posterity ; and what is by far the chief of all, 
the young are perpetually excited to the hope of imitating 
these illustrious fathers of the state, and of earning that hon- 
ourable name and grateful remembrance which the good alone 
can obtain."( 1 ) 

The effect of such a usage could not be otherwise ; for it 
was founded in the deepest knowledge of human nature. 

The rules of prudence, the obligations of moral duty, the 
lessons of high philosophy, the exhortations of ardent patriot- 
ism, are all, in themselves, but cold generalizations, which 



may command the assent of the reason and be treasured 
away in the memory, without warming the heart or giving 
any direction to the conduct. Embody these in example, 
enable the imagination to give to them voice and form, and 
they at once become living and impressive teachers of the no- 
blest truth. Combine with this strong influence that of an- 
other great law of human nature, the principle of association ; 
let these examples be drawn from the lives of those who have 
laboured or suffered for our own good, whose mother-tongue 
was our own, who once breathed the air and trod the soil of 
our own dear native land, the fruit of whose labours we are 
now enjoying, the scenes of whose exertions are still before our 
eyes, — how eloquent then do such examples become ! When 
they have been made familiar to the mind, when they are 
combined with our earliest recollections, how little can be 
added to their force by fancy or rhetoric ! A simply stated 
fact, a date, a mere name, is then sufficient to excite the flush 
of patriotic sympathy, or the thrill of generous enthusiasm. 

For these, the most exalted uses of History and Biography, 
of literature and eloquence, America has already rich and 
abundant materials. Here the ordinary history of centuries 
has been crowded into the space of a single life. Here the 
humble colony of one generation has, in another, risen into a 
powerful state, and expands to a great empire in a third. 
This rapid course of events could not pass along without de- 
veloping the energies of minds worthy of the times, and equal 
to their greatest occasions. Their scene of action was vast and 
magnificent ; they were animated and sustained by stronger 



10 

as well as purer motives than heathen philosophy ever knew ; 
whilst science had armed their minds with powers, to which 
the knowledge of the chiefs and rulers of past ages was as that 
of children. It is one of the best and most, exalted duties of 
the men of the present day, to make the characters and lives 
of these fathers of our country known and familiar to the youth 
of our land, and to accustom them to draw the lessons of wis- 
dom, and the examples of virtue, from our own annals : H He- 
roum laudes et facta parentum, leg ere" and from them to 
learn " quai sit cognoscere virtus" 

It is from these considerations, and with the hope of dis- 
charging some part of this duty, that I have been induced to 
select the subject of the present discourse. It seemed to me, 
that in addressing the literary societies formed under the pro- 
tection of our ancient college amongst her students and grad- 
uates, for their mufual improvement in the best uses of good 
learning, — meeting them, too, upon the eve of that literary 
anniversary when our Alma Mater is again to send forth a 
fresh body of her sons, from the discipline of education, to the 
cares and struggles of active life, — no theme could be more 
appropriate than the praise of some of those illustrious dead, 
whose memory our country cherishes with grateful affection, 
and whom our college proudly numbers among her eldest and 
favourite sons. 

It has been the merit or the happy fortune of this institu- 
tion, to have educated no inconsiderable number of America's 
greatest men. Here many of the most vigorous and origi- 
nal minds of the nation have received their first intellectual 



11 

discipline and impulse. This is no idle boast, no fond exag- 
geration. From her origin, eminent for sound and accurate 
instruction in classical learning and mathematical science ; 
placed in the midst of a city, where the restless and unceasing 
activity of enterprize and industry keeps the mind always 
awake, and presents to the most careless looker-on every aspect 
of human character and variety of human pursuit, this col- 
lege has long given her pupils most of the advantages which 
can stimulate application or awaken genius ; and the fame of 
many of her sons has amply repaid the cares of their Alma 
Mater. Amongst these she can claim some of the fathers of 
our civil liberties, the founders of our national institutions, the 
teachers of our civil wisdom. On the same roll are inscribed 
the names of public benefactors, who, by the improvement or 
wider application of science, have enlarged the power and 
augmented the IUppiness of man, and scattered plenty over 
the land. There, too, are the names of those who " have 
turned many unto righteousness," by devoting the best gifts of 
learning, taste, genius, and eloquence to the study and incul- 
cation of gospel truth and moral law. 

It is not my intention to attempt giving a minute account 
of the lives or virtues of any one of them. That is the proper 
business of the historian and the biographer. My chosen task 
is a briefer one, but it is not less grateful or honourable. It is, 
to present in rapid review before you the names and characters 
of some few of the most distinguished of those who have thus 
illustrated our academic family, and, from this literary rostrum, 
amidst the scenes of their youthful studies and earliest distinc- 



12 

tions, surrounded in imagination by their venerable forms and 
the trophied honours of their maturer lives, to speak to you 
briefly of their virtues and talents. I cannot indeed speak of 
them with the eloquence of antiquity, but I trust to do it in 
its true spirit; turning aside from the recollection of the 
errors or frailty which haply may have sometimes alloyed 
their excellence, expelling from my own breast every narrow 
or bitter feeling excited by difference of opinion, which might 
tempt me to wrong the fame of any one of them, and striv- 
ing to raise myself and my hearers to a congenial admiration 
of moral and intellectual worth and high deserts. 

At the commencement of our revolution, this college had 
been in successful progress for about twenty years, under 
learned and able instructers, with all the collateral aids of sci- 
ence which the times afforded. The weight of station, au- 
thority, and perhaps of talent, in this city, was with the mother 
country. Dr. Cooper, the President of this college, was a wit 
and a scholar, whose learning and accomplishments gave him 
personal popularity and respect with his pupils, and of course 
added authority to his opinions — and those were the opin- 
ions and prejudices of the high-toned English University tory 
of the last century. To these halls then we should scarcely have 
looked for any of the earliest champions of American rights. 
Yet why not ? In them classic lore had unfolded to the student 
the grand and exciting sentiments of ancient liberty; here 
the discipline of mathematical reasoning — a discipline, if possi- 
ble, still more valuable than the conclusions which that rea- 
soning establishes — had trained him to think and to judge for 



13 

himself; and here he had been directed by the great masters 
of English philosophy, by Bacon and Locke, to venerate, to 
feel, and to assert the rights of private judgment and con- 
science. Yes — learning may be, and too often has been, the 
slavish handmaid of power, hoodwinked by early prejudice, 
lured by interest or dazzled by ambition. But these are not the 
true and natural results, — they never can be, — of any study 
which otherwise enlarges the understanding and elevates the 
soul. Those who so believe, do but vilify Heaven's best gifts 
to the human race. Well hath it been said of such reasoners, 
by a philosophical and republican poet — 

" Oh fool ! tu think the man whose ample mind 
Must grasp at all that yonder stars survey ; 
Must join the noblest forms of every kind, 

The world's most perfect image to display, 
Can e'er his country's majesty behold, 
Unmoved or cold ! 
Oh fool ! to deem 
That he whose thought must visit every theme 

That he, if haply some presumptuous foe, 

With false, ignoble science fraught, 
Shall spurn at freedom's faithful band ; 

That he their dear defence will shun, 

Or hide their glories from the sun, 
Or deal their vengeance with a woman's hand." 

AKENSIDE. 

The annals of our college bear testimony to the same ele- 
vating truth. Her Alumni were among the foremost cham- 
pions of American liberty in the cabinet and the field. There 
were early found Jay, and Livingston, and Morris, and Ben- 
son ; Yan Cortlandt, and Rutgers, and Troup, and Hamilton. 



14 

At the beginning of that glorious struggle, Alexander Ham- 
ilton was still a youth, engaged in pursuing his college studies 
with that ardour and application which characterized all his 
mental efforts throughout life. The momentous questions of 
the rights of the colonies, and the powers of the parent state, 
had been discussed in New- York with no ordinary talent on 
both sides. The mind of the future statesman was roused by 
the subject. Like the Swedish warrior, who, when he heard 
for the first time the whistling of bullets about him, exclaimed, 
" This henceforth shall be my music," young Hamilton, with 
a nobler instinct, when he then first turned his mind to the 
investigation of great principles, the duties of subjects, their 
rights, and those of their rulers and of the state, felt the true 
vocation of his genius, and rushed impatiently forward to enter 
upon his destined career of a patriot statesman. Then it was 
that his talents were first employed in the public service ; and 
(in the words of his eloquent funeral eulogist*) "America saw 
with astonishment a lad of seventeen in the ranks of her ad- 
vocates, at a time when her advocates were sages and patriots." 
A few months more found the same youth the companion in 
arms and the confidential friend of Washington. Who 
amongst us does not know the other events of his life ? I 
can touch only upon that part of it which is identified with 
the history of our constitution. 

It was to his foresight, his influence and eloquence, more 
than to any other man, perhaps more than to all others, that 

* Dr. Mason. 



15 

we owe that union of the states under the present constitution, 
which rescued us from weakness and anarchy, and gave us a 
permanent rank among the nations of the earth. It is well 
known that in the convention which framed it, opinions as to 
the character of the proposed instrument were held, so widely 
variant from each other, and so warmly, as to threaten the dis- 
solution of the assembly without coming to any useful result. 
Hamilton's own theoretical plan of a constitution was undoubt- 
edly not in unison with the principles and feelings of a majori- 
ty of the people ; for he thought that the state of society at 
home, and of public affairs abroad, required a frame of govern- 
ment as secure from the fluctuations of popular opinion as 
could be made consistent with its foundation in the public will.. 
This was a theory, in my view, deduced from an imperfect 
estimate of the American character, and of the tendency 
and effect of representative institutions, which our ampler ex- 
perience has, I trust, contradicted and refuted. But he hesitat- 
ed not to sacrifice his pride of opinion to the practical good of 
the country. Amidst the discordant elements of parties, and 
the collisions which proceeded from them, his great talents 
were devoted with steadfast singleness of purpose to the object 
of national union. To this he sacrificed every secondary con- 
sideration. He sought union in the spirit of union, and finally 
attained it, not by the victory of a party, but, as the Conven- 
tion solemnly declared, " as the result of a spirit of amity and 
mutual deference and concession."* 

* Address of the Convention to the People of the U. S. 



16 

As this spirit gave birth to our federative government, so 
surely will it long continue to animate and sustain it. Who- 
ever commends this spirit of mutual submission and concession 
merely as a salutary remedy against whatever ills may threat- 
en our national union, in my mind, sees its operation but 
darkly and imperfectly. It is far more than this. It is the 
vital and animating soul of our form of government, through- 
out all its stages. It is bound up in all its provisions. It is 
taught in all our political institutions and usages, general, and 
state, and local. It is the earliest and most frequently repeated 
lesson of every citizen ; it is inculcated upon him in every ex- 
ercise of his elective rights. A wisdom higher than human 
foresight has thus made that which is the essential support of 
our civil polity, the natural result of all its operations. By this 
the Union was formed, and by it the Union Avill be preserved. 
The effective defence of this constitution, its luminous exposi- 
tion, and its victorious adoption after a doubtful and embittered 
contest, give to Hamilton other and equally enduring claims 
upon the gratitude of posterity. In his speeches in the con- 
vention of this state, and in the more expanded vindication 
and exposition of the constitution contained in his numbers of 
the Federalist, whilst the immediate object of clearing up 
doubts, satisfying scruples, and refuting objections was victo- 
riously obtained, he has left to succeeding generations a trea- 
sure of political science, which must ever be resorted to as the 
most authoritative and masterly exposition of our constitutional 
charter, and the most luminous commentary upon the nature 
and history of representative and federative government. 



17 

Then succeeded his short but brilliant administration of our 
finances, rendered memorable by that efficient organization of 
the public revenue and resources which replenished the bank- 
rupt treasury, raised the prostrate national credit and placed it 
on a firm and durable basis, gave immediate activity to com- 
merce and the arts, and security to all their pursuits. It 
was memorable too for a series of official reports from his 
pen, which have proved the inexhaustible source of instruc- 
tion, of argument, of authority to our statesmen, political econo- 
mists, jurists, and orators, under every administration and all 
forms of parties. Of the doctrines sustained in these reports, 
many belong to the still debateable and debated questions of 
economical and constitutional discussion upon which great 
parties and great minds have heretofore divided, or still differ. 
How is it then, that Hamilton's writings, like his fame, have 
ceased to be the property of a party, and have become that of 
the nation ? 

It was not merely that he brought to the consideration of 
vast and complicated questions a mind original, inventive, lo- 
gical ; that those native powers were supported by an untiring 
industry and abundant knowledge, which drew elucidation 
and argument from every collateral source. But it was, that 
this vigour of mind and amplitude of knowledge were but the 
instruments of a frank, and simple, and manly integrity of 
purpose, unstained by any selfish motive, always seeking for 
truth as its object, always looking to the public good as its 
ultimate end. It was this that stamped its peculiar character 
upon his eloquence, whether spoken or written. Filled with 



18 

the strong- interest of his subject, he had no thought of him- 
self. There were no nights of ambitious rhetoric, no gaudy 
ornament, no digressions of useless learning or ostentatious 
philosophy ; every thing he said had relation to his subject 
alone, and that was viewed in every light, tried by every test f 
examined, scrutinized, canvassed, discussed ; no objection sup- 
pressed, no difficulty avoided ; till at last, whatever might be 
his own conclusion, nothing was wanting which could enable 
the hearer or reader to judge for himself. His stream of 
thought, as it proceeded, was swelled from a thousand 
fountains, but it flowed on in one full, clear, and mighty 
current. 

It was this same characteristic of moral and intellectual 
frankness, that, during his life, made him, without office or 
. patronage,, the acknowledged head of a talented and powerful 
party ; that, amidst that violence of contention which alienated 
friends and brothers, gained for the leader and champion of a 
minority the confidence of the whole nation in his purity and 
patriotic intentions. This won for Hamilton the high tribute 
of his illustrious rival, Thomas Jefferson, not only to his "co- 
lossal talents," but to his private virtues, and the good faith 
and undissembled honour of his public conduct. When he 
died, it was this recollection above all others which filled the 
land with gloom and sorrow. 

Many years have passed away — I was then very young — 
but I still remember as it were yesterday, the manner in which 
the news of his fall flew throughout this city — the earnest in- 
quiries which were every where heard — the expression of anx- 



19 

ious and painful interest which was seen in every countenance. 
On the green before the house near this city where he lay 
expiring", I saw collected, in silent groups, all that society most 
esteemed for ability or worth. There, and every where, past 
differences, personal or political opposition, were sunk at once 
and for ever, in grief and honour for the honest statesman 
and the eloquent patriot. 

The name of John Jay is gloriously associated with that of 
Alexander Hamilton, in the history of our liberties and our 
laws. John Jay had completed his academic education in 
this college, several years before the commencement of the revo- 
lution ; and the beginning of the contest between Great Bri- 
tain and the colonies found him already established in legal 
reputation, and, young as he still was, singularly well fitted for 
his country's most arduous services, by a rare union of the 
dignity and gravity of mature age with youthful energy and 
zeal. At the age of twenty-eight, he drafted, and in effect him- 
self formed, the first constitution of the state of New- York, under 
which we lived for forty-five years, which still forms the basis 
of our present state government, and from which other states 
have since borrowed many of its most remarkable and origi- 
nal provisions. At that age, as soon as New- York threw off 
her colonial character, he was appointed the first Chief Justice 
of the state. Then followed a long, rapid, and splendid suc- 
cession of high trusts and weighty duties, the results of which 
are recorded in the most interesting pages of our annals. It 
was the moral courage of Jay, at the head of the Supreme 
Court of his own state, that gave confidence and union to the 



20 

people of New- York. It was from his richly stored mind that 
proceeded, while representing this state in the Congress of the 
United States, (over whose deliberations he for a time presided) 
many of those celebrated state papers, whose grave eloquence 
commanded the admiration of Europe, and drew forth the 
eulogy of the master orators and statesmen of the times — of 
Chatham and Burke — whilst, by the evidence which they 
gave to the wisdom and talent that guided the councils of 
America, they contributed to her reputation and ultimate tri- 
umph as much as the most signal victories of her arms. As 
our minister at Madrid and Paris, his sagacity penetrated, and 
his calm firmness defeated, the intricate wiles of the diploma- 
tists and cabinets of Europe, until, in illustrious association 
with Franklin and John Adams, he settled and signed the de- 
finitive treaty of peace, recognizing and confirming our na- 
tional independence. On his return home, a not less illustri- 
ous association awaited him in a not less illustrious cause, — 
the establishment and defence of the present constitution, with 
Hamilton and Madison. The last Secretary of Foreign Af- 
fairs under the old confederation, he was selected by Wash- 
ington as the first Chief Justice of the United States under the 
new constitution. 

I need not speak of the talent with which he discharged 
the duties of this latter station. His early education and regu- 
lar industry had made him a learned technical lawyer ; and 
after a long suspension of these studies, he returned to the law 
with a mind invigorated by constant and laborious employ- 
ment, enlarged by a variety of knowledge and observation, 



21 

and habituated to the investigation and exposition of the first 
principles of right, of liberty, and of government. 

His able negociation and commercial treaty with Great Bri- 
tain, and his six years' administration as Governor of this state, 
completed his public life. 

As the character of Hamilton presents, in its soldier-like 
frankness and daring, a beautiful example of the spirit of chiv- 
alry applied to the pursuits of the statesman, so in that of Jay, 
pure and holy justice seemed to be embodied. He lived as 
one — 

Sent forth of the Omnipotent, to run 
The great career of justice. 

He was endowed above most men with steadiness of purpose 
and self-command. He had early sought out for himself, and 
firmly established in his mind, the grand truths, religious, 
moral, or political, which were to regulate his conduct ; and 
they were all embodied in his daily life. Hence the admirable 
consistency of his character, which was the more striking as 
it seemed to reconcile and unite apparently opposite qualities. 
That grave prudence, which, in common men, would have 
swayed every action to the side of timid caution, was in him 
combined with invincible energy. So too in his opinions. 
No man was more deeply penetrated with the doctrines or the 
sentiment of religion ; no man more conscientiously exact in 
its observances ; whilst no man could look with more jealousy 
on any intermixture of the religious with the temporal authori- 
ty; no man more dreaded, or watched with more vigilant 



22 

caution, every invasion, however slight, upon the rights of 
private conscience. 

After a long and uninterrupted series of the highest civil 
employments, in the most difficult times, he suddenly retired 
from their toils and dignities, in the full vigour of mind and 
body, and at an age when, in most statesmen, the objects of 
ambition show as gorgeously, and its aspirations are as stilling 
as ever. He looked upon himself as having fully discharged 
his debt of service to his country ; and satisfied with the am- 
ple share of gratitude which he had received, he retired with 
cheerful content, without ever once casting a reluctant eye to- 
wards the power or dignities he had left. For the last thirty 
years of his remaining life, he was known to us only by the 
occasional appearance of his name, or the employment of his 
pen in the service of piety or philanthropy. A halo of venera- 
tion seemed to encircle him, as one belonging to another world, 
though yet lingering amongst us. When, during the last 
year, the tidings of his death came to us, they were received 
through the nation, not with sorrow or mourning, but with 
solemn awe ; like that with which we read the mysterious 
passage of ancient scripture — "And Enoch walked with God, 
and he was not, for God took him." 

Among the immortal names of our revolution and earlier 
political history, our college may claim yet a third son, worthy 
to be ranked with those of whom I have spoken. 

Eloquent and learned, graced with taste and fancy, the ac- 
complishments of elegant letters and arts, and the acquisitions 
of solid science, Robert R. Livingston was the fellow-labourer 



23 

of Jay and Hamilton in achieving the liberties of the United 
States, and in rearing the fabric of our civil institutions, as- 
well as their ablest rival and opponent in the subsequent divi- 
sion of parties. He filled for twenty-five years the first law 
office of this state ; and during that period of the revolution in 
which the best talent of the nation was employed in its diplo- 
matic service, acted as Secretary of Foreign Affairs to Con- 
gress, with an ability and talent at that time duly estimated, 
but which had fallen into oblivion, and become unknown to 
most of the present generation, until their effects were again 
conspicuously brought to light by the very recently published 
diplomatic correspondence of the American revolution.( 2 ) These 
alone are signal claims to distinction ; but in him they are lost 
in the blaze of far brighter and more lasting honours. His 
first act as an American statesman, was as one of the commit- 
tee of five (Jefferson, Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, 
and Robert R. Livingston,) who, in the Congress of 1776, pre- 
pared and presented the Declaration of Independence. His 
last political transaction was the negotiating and concluding 
that treaty which added to our empire, Louisiana, with the 
command of the Mississippi and that vast territory whence 
one mighty state after another is now successively bursting into 
life. Thus the name of Livingston is deeply inscribed upon 
the very corner-stone of our national liberties, and on the broad- 
est arch of our national power. 

But the most important part of a country's history is not al- 
ways that which is written in its political annals. The ad- 
vance of knowledge, commerce, agriculture, arts, whilst they 



24 

seem but to follow in the train of good government, often ope- 
rate in silence changes as gigantic in their influence on human 
happiness, as those revolutions which shake the world and 
give birth to nations. Such changes have we witnessed within 
our own lives, and in our own country. 

Splendid as were the incidents of Chancellor Livingston's 
official and political career, he himself wisely looked with more 
satisfaction, and his best fame may hereafter rest, upon his ef- 
ficient agency as an enlightened private citizen in hastening 
forward the march of improvement over our land. He was 
among the first in this state who applied to agriculture the sci- 
ence and the interest of a liberal study, braving the laugh of 
the ignorant and the sneers of the prejudiced at the failure of 
his experiments, and richly rewarded in their success by the 
general good he had earned. The arts of taste and design 
found in him one of their earliest and most judicious patrons. 
Under his auspices the first academy in this country for their 
cultivation was formed, and under his immediate direction it 
was provided with the best means of improvement for the art- 
ist, and of instruction and refinement to the general taste. 
Above all, his agency in the invention of steam-navigation, 
his enlightened science in perceiving its practicability and ad- 
mirable use, his prophetic confidence in ultimate success amidst 
repeated disappointments, losses, and ridicule, and finally his 
sagacity in seizing upon and associating with himself the 
practical genius of Fulton, whose plans had been rejected with 
scorn by the rulers, the savans, and the capitalists of the old 
world, combine to place him in the highest ranks of the last- 



25 

ing benefactors of the human race. It is a beautiful thought 
of Lord Bacon's, that, antiquity, which honoured the law-giv- 
ers, the founders or deliverers of states, but with the title of 
worthies or demigods, rightly bestowed upon those who had 
invented or improved the arts and commodities of human life, 
" honours (as he terms them) heroical and divine ;" because 
the merit of the former is confined within the circle of one age or 
nation, but that of the others is indeed like the benefits of hea- 
ven, being permanent and universal. " The former," says he, 
" is mixed with strife and perturbation ; but the latter, like the 
true presence of Deity, comes without noise or agitation."* 

It was therefore a proud eulogy, as well as a true one, 
which a distinguished professor (whose own name adds scien- 
tific lustre to the catalogue of her sons) lately pronounced upon 
this college, when he traced to her walls and lecture-rooms, 
the germs of the greatest practical improvements which sci- 
ence has bestowed upon our state and nation, — the steam- 
navigation of Livingston and Stevens, (for the name of Ste- 
vens belongs also to us) ( 3 ) and the canal system of Morris 
and Clinton. 

The memory of De Witt Clinton, the first graduate after 
the peace of 1783, is another brilliant and treasured possession 
of this college. After the numerous tributes which have so 
recently been paid to his memory, and especially that luminous 
view of his character as a scholar and a statesman, as the pro- 
moter of good education and useful improvement, contained 

* Advancement of Learning, 1. i. 

4 



I 



26 



in the discourse lately delivered from this place, by Professor 
Renwick, to the Alumni of Columbia College, any thing I 
could now say on the same subject would be but useless repe- 
tition. Else would I gladly pay the homage due to his emi- 
nent and lasting services, and honour that lofty ambition 
which taught him to look to designs of grand utility, and to 
their successful execution, as his arts of gaining or redeeming 
the confidence of a generous and public-spirited people. For 
whatever of party animosity might have ever blinded me to 
his merits, had died away long before his death ; and I could 
now utter his honest praises without the imputation of hollow 
pretence from others, or the mortifying consciousness in my 
own breast, of rendering unwilling and tardy justice. 

I have already exhausted much of the time and attention 
I have a right to claim of you ; and there still remain many 
names worthy of much honour, whom I had intended to com- 
memorate. Some of these I must reluctantly pass over in si- 
lence, and of others I can do no more than awaken your re- 
spect or affection by a brief and hurried mention. 

Yet the lives of some of them afford the richest materials 
for biography, and are indissoluably associated with the most 
interesting events of our history. There was Richard Harrison, 
alike in years and in parental care the father of our college^ 
for half a century the most learned and accomplished lawyer 
of a learned bar, who during a long and busy life continued 
to pursue with unabated interest and application, the study of 
the best literature of antiquity and modern languages, and 
found in those studies which in early youth had ripened his 



27 

taste, and which graced the severer and profound legal science 
of his maturer life, the still animating occupation and amuse- 
ment of an honourable and honoured old age. 

There was the eloquent and highly gifted Gouverneur 
Morris, fitted for the stirring times of revolution by the buoy- 
ant energy of his character, and formed to grace any scene 
by the ready versatility of his talent, the brilliancy of his wit 
and imagination, and the wide range of his knowledge and 
accomplishments. The marks of his genius are to be seen 
every where ; for he was the companion of Hamilton and Jay 
in their labours for the independence of this nation, and the 
establishment of this government ; and he was the associate 
of Clinton in joining the ocean with the lakes. 

Nor can I pass over in utter silence the amiable Tompkins, 
the rival and opponent of Clinton ; for there is one remarkable 
incident in his life, peculiarly proper to be remembered here, 
and upon such an occasion as this. It is not that in the short 
space of twenty-five years, he passed in quick and unbroken 
.•succession through every high trust which the people of this 
state could bestow upon him. It is not that in all of them he 
showed himself equal to their important duties ; that, through- 
put all of them, his gentle bearing, his many amiable and 
generous qualities, won for him the people's love ; that in the 
.dark hour of national peril, when the power of the Union was 
shattered, and its resources bankrupt, he put that popularity to 
the noblest use, by rallying the people of this state as one man 
to the common defence, until, in the oblivion of former politi- 



23 

cal contentions, New- York rose with a giant's strength and 
raised its united voice, — that voice, to the whole land, 

The liveliest pledge 



Of hope, in fear or danger ; heard so oft 
In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge 
Of battle where it raged. 

These are recollections which still warm the hearts of thou- 
sands. There is another which more peculiarly belongs to us. 
It was during his administration of the government of this 
state, and under his recommendation and direction, that our 
general common school system was formed and put into ope- 
ration — a system admirable for the happy ingenuity with 
which state patronage and superintendence are combined with 
local and individual support and supervision — full of present effi- 
ciency, and yet capable of illimitable expansion and of adapta- 
tion to the wants of an increasing population, and their pro- 
gressive demands for better instruction and higher knowledge. 
Rough and imperfect as these outlines of character have ne- 
cessarily been, they have yet covered so much of my canvass 
that I have little room left for others, whom, when the plan of 
this discourse first occurred to me, I meant to have made con- 
spicuous in it. To our statesmen and jurists, the benefactors 
of society and the promoters of the arts, I wished to add with 
equal respect our departed scholars^ and authors, and divines. 
They are many, but must not all be wholly omitted. "We can 
never in this hall forget the mild wisdom of our former Presi- 



29 

dent, Bishop Moore.* His placid dignity of aspect is still be- 
fore me. The tremulous melody of his winning and touch- 
ing eloquence still sounds in my ears. And, too, if I can 
place no worthier offering on the tomb of Bowden,t let me at 
least mention him with a pupil's grateful remembrance, as a 
scholar, a reasoner, and a gentleman ; and bear witness to his 
pure taste, his deep and accurate erudition, his logical acute- 
ness, and the dignified rectitude of his principles and cha- 
racter. 

Thence I might lead you along among the tombs of the 
learned and the good, who, in their days of youth and hope, 
filled these halls, and who now rest in peace ; pausing ever 
and anon, to mourn over some one of those whom we have 
revered or loved, until we stopped together at the still fresh 
grave of young BruenJ — 

Dead before his prime, 



Young Lycidas ! and hath not left his peer. 

Within a few weeks a bright light has been extinguished, 
a mighty mind has departed. If scholarship, at once exten- 
sive and profound, if the rare union of intimate acquaintance 
with books, and deep learning in the spirits and ways of men, 
if eloquence powerful, impressive, peculiar, original, if that 
strength of mind which masters others to its will, and sways 

* Rt. Rev. Benjamin Moore, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
in the state of New-York, and President of Columbia College. 

t Dr. John Bowden, for many years Professor of Moral Philosophy and 
Logic in Columbia College. 

4 Rev. Mathias Bruen, Pastor of the Prince-street Presbyterian Church. 



30 

opinion, if devotion and zeal for the best interests of mankind, 
animating and directing that learning, sagacity and eloquence, 
— if such endowments can add lustre or dignity to character, 
that praise is Mason's. 

Almost from the hour he left these walls, he exercised a 
wide and commanding influence over the minds of others. 
Posterity will doubtless judge of his talent chiefly from his 
written productions. These are but fragments of his mind ; 
the vigorous, but accidental exertions of his strength. Yet 
the future reader will see in these, the productions of original 
genius acting upon ample stores of learning. The author is 
there seen seizing his subject with the gigantic grasp of John- 
son or Horsley, stripping off and throwing contemptuously 
aside the common-places which might belong to it, and em- 
bodying his own weighty sense in language always peculiarly 
his own, always forcible, always perspicuous, frequently con- 
densed and polished, often fervid, glowing, and impassioned. 

Still his writings afford, I repeat, an inadequate idea of the 
riches of his intellect. A more favourite field of exertion than 
that of mere authorship, (for I believe that, like many men of 
the fullest and the readiest minds, he sat down reluctantly to 
the toil of elaborate composition,) was in the business of edu- 
cation. It was as Provost of this college, as President of Dick- 
inson college, and, for a much longer period, and with yet 
greater zeal, as head of the theological school of his own 
church, that he applied those principles which he has laid 
down with admirable force and precision, in that masterly re- 
port to the Trustees of Columbia College, which forms the 



31 

basis of their present system of academic instruction. There 
it was that he laboured, not to teach the mere knowledge of 
words, or the mere knowledge of things, bat (I use his own 
language) "to teach his pupils to get knowledge for themselves, 
by eliciting their faculties, and forming them to the habit of 
thinking."* 

But by far the highest proofs of Dr. Mason's ability were 
shown in their proper place, his own pulpit ; and there, chief 
of all, in that immense and continuous system of scriptural 
exposition and commentary, which he was, for many years, 
accustomed to give, according to the old usage of the Scotch 
churches. 

Whilst the very nature of these unwritten and extempora- 
neous, but not unprepared expositions, rejected the forms 
and method of rhetorical art, they were the more singularly 
adapted to the kind and variety of his talent. There, he was 
wont to pour forth the overwhelming opulence of his mind in 
irregular but magnificent profusion, laying alike under contri- 
bution to his object, theological learning, classic lore, and the 
literature of the day ; illustrating the conclusions of the logi- 
cian by acute observations upon life and manners ; alternately 
convincing the reason, and searching and probing the deep 
recesses of the conscience ; now drawing moral lessons from 
the history of the long-buried past, and now commenting upon 
the events or the vices of the day, or perhaps the follies of the 
hour ; now lifting aloft the blazing torch of Christian philo- 
sophy to guide the honest seeker after truth, and now shower- 

* Report to Trustees of Columbia College. 



32 

ing his withering scorn upon the scoffer's head ; explaining f 
defending, deducing, enforcing his doctrines or precepts, some- 
times with colloquial familiarity, and then again in a bold 
and swelling eloquence, which stirred and warmed the heart 
like the sound of a trumpet. 

It was in his noon-day of life, his prime of mind, when the 
little asperities of character which often accompany the con- 
sciousness of high mental power, were softened and mellowed 
away, when his views and opinions had been opened and libe- 
ralized by large experience and independent thought, when 
every thing promised a long, and glorious, and useful career^ 
that the numbing hand of disease was laid upon him 7 and 
the infirmities of premature age arrested alike his professional 
duties and his plans of literary enterprize. Such are the hopes 
of man ! Over his loss to her churches, her studies, and the 
training of her ministry, Religion has long mourned. Among 
his literary enterprizes thus interrupted, was his long meditat- 
ed biography of Hamilton, on which he had wished and hoped 
to put forth the whole force of his genius. He had studied 
his subject deeply ; he was intimately acquainted with the 
character of his hero and his friend ; and he would have pour- 
ed forth his soul in his eulogy, with the sympathy of conge- 
nial talent, and the eloquence of fond affection. 

It has accidentally happened, (for it was not in the precise 
order of time) that I commenced this broken record of our de- 
ceased collegiate worthies with the name of Hamilton. Can 
I close it more appropriately, or with more dignity to our col- 
lege, than with that of Mason ? 



33 



My Friends and Brothers 

OF THE PHILOLEXIAN AND PEITHOLOGIAN SOCIETIES — 

The short and hurried notices which I have pre- 
sented to you, form, I fear, a very poor tribute to the worth of 
those whom I have aspired to celebrate ; but, for the end I had 
mainly in view in selecting their eulogy for my theme, I have 
said enough, and more than enough. I have hoped to show 
you, by the clear evidence of such examples, the rich advan- 
tages of education which you have enjoyed, the solemn duties 
which such advantages impose, the ample heritage of renown 
which it has fallen to you to preserve or augment, the claims 
of society upon us, the broad avenues of glorious and benefi- 
cent exertion which open before us. Thither truth and vir- 
tue point you the way. Thither the great men who have 
formerly issued from these halls beckon to you to follow them. 

In our connexion with them and their fame, there can be 
nothing to inflate vanity or to sooth indolence. It cannot, 
like the privileges and pride of noble birth, be turned to any 
purpose of delusion to others, or furnish food for our own self- 
conceit. Our accidental education in the halls where Jay, and 
Livingston, and Clinton once studied, confers no dignity upon 
us, except so far as we may worthily emulate them ; but it 
overwhelms us with shame if we disgrace the memory of our 
elder brothers — if we prove false and recreant to our academic 
mother. 

The character of our country's genius is eminently practical; 
and it has struck me with great force, that this too is the pre- 



34 

dominant characteristic of all those whom I have pointed out 
to your emulation. Not one of them was a mere scholar, 
contented with the bare acquirement of learning, or of learned 
fame. Their science, their literature, their talent were all 
consecrated to the duties of society, and the general weal. In 
this, surely, we may imitate them. 

Differing as they did in some points of opinion from each 
other — erring as they sometimes did in conduct — those differ- 
ences and errors may teach us the infirmity of all human wis- 
dom, and the duty of candid and tolerant judgment ; but let 
us look rather to their virtues than their imperfections, and re- 
member that they now live in our grateful memory, because 
formerly they lived not for themselves alone. 

Let us not sooth our sloth, or vindicate our selfishness, by 
the poor excuse, that their excellence was the fruit of rare 
genius, or still rarer contingencies of fortune, which we have 
no right to claim or to hope. For us this is no apology. What 
may be the value of our talents or attainments to others as 
well as to ourselves, cannot be known until it be tried. If we 
are once excited to warm aspirations after true excellence, the 
materials of action will not long be wanting. 

It is true that we have not again a nation's liberties to 
achieve. We have not now to lay once • more the foundations 
of its government. But our liberties are always to be watched 
over, guarded, and defended. Our laws are to be improved, 
somewhat in their equity, much in their policy. Physical sci- 
ence, much as it has advanced, may now be carried forwards 
far beyond what was once deemed the extravagance of the 



35 

wildest dreamer. That science, as well as all other valuable 
information, is no longer to remain the hoarded possession 
of a chosen few, but must be made popular and elementary, 
and placed within the reach of all. In that other vast re- 
gion of science which relates to mind and morals, our duties 
are still more numerous and urgent. Prejudices and errors 
are to be vanquished ; truth is sometimes to be defended from 
assault or insult, always to be inculcated, explained, enforced. 

It is our happy lot to live in an age and country where the 
field of usefulness is literally unbounded ; where, in the inde- 
finite increase of numbers and general intelligence, no well 
directed effort to better the condition of others can be little or 
worthless. As it recedes from us, its effect swells up into il- 
limitable and startling magnitude. Diffidence, or rather sloth 
in her garb, may whisper, that it will be far beyond our 
strength to work out any of those conquests over moral or 
physical evil, for which posterity reserves the never-fading 
wreath of true renown. Be it so. Yet wherefore has talent 
been given to us, and knowledge painfully won, if we cannot, 
in our place and sphere, contribute something to the sacred 
cause of virtue, freedom, happiness, truth 1 Obscurely it may 
be, but not the less honestly ; without the gratification of per- 
sonal distinction, but certainly not without the better reward of 
conscious well-doing. 

Nevertheless, despite of these and all such considerations, it 
must be that in some of us, indeed, at times in all of us, low 
thoughts and selfish passions will gain possession of the mind. 

I am speaking to scholars, and may without pedantry recall 
to them that familiar but striking passage of ancient history, 



36 

of which the great English moral poet has made so exquisite 
a use, when the conqueror of his country, 

Ignobly vain and impotently great, 

Showed Rome her Cato's image drawn in state : 

As her dead Father's reverent image past, 

The pomp was saddened, and the day o'ercast ; 

The triumph ceased — tears gushed from every eye 

Even so may it be with us. The memorials of those who 
have shared our early studies, and turned them to worthier 
uses than we have done, need not be sought for in the sculp- 
tured marble and bronze. They are around us and about us ; 
they meet us in the halls of legislation and the courts of jus- 
tice ; in the busy commerce of our ports, and the richly-freight- 
ed navigation of our rivers and canals ; in our system of edu- 
cation, our schools, our colleges, and pulpits. Every where 
we may trace the impress of their minds, every where we may 
hear their monitorial voices. 

Then, whatever tyrant passion may have obtained the mas- 
tery of our hearts ; whether bad ambition, or base avarice, or 
the love of pleasure, or more fatal indolence ; let us listen to 
those voices : let us be roused by the admonition of those me- 
morials to bid the triumph of the passions cease, and suffer the 
world's gaudy pageant to pass along unheeded. 

That sway is then at an end. Those misty delusions fade 
away. The guiding star of our youth beams brightly once 
again upon the rough pathway of virtue before us. We erect 
ourselves to holier contemplation, and purer desires. We gird 
ourselves to the true purpose of good education, the perform- 
ance of our duty to our God, our country, and our kind. 



NOTES. 



NOTE I. 



to<5 TFoXtoiq text TrctgctfroTifAos tois eTnyivofttvots »j tcov evEgyeTqa-civTav 
tjjk Txr^iS'oc ynercci ^'o\ct. to $e f&eytsov, o'i veoi 7rxgogfAavTctt vrgbs to 
ttuv vTOftsv&iV V7reg Tav xotvcXv Tr^ocy/nctTM, %<*£<v tS tv%siv Ty$ o-vvstxo~ 
A«5»c-sj5 toTs ayot.%7<s Tav uvfyav eux.Xeioi<;. — Polybius, Hist. VI. 52. 

NOTE II. 

The diplomatic correspondence of the Revolution preserved 
in the archives of the government of the United States, was, for 
obvious reasons, kept secret for many years. Those reasons 
having now ceased, and the correspondence become mere mat- 
ter of history, it was ordered to be published some time ago, 
under the direction of the President of the United States, by a 
joint resolution of the two houses of Congress ; and during the 
last year seven volumes, containing the diplomatic letters of 
Franklin, Jay, J. Adams, Laurens, and others have been printed. 
In the first years of the revolution, the correspondence was ad- 
dressed by our Ministers abroad to the Committee of Foreign 
Affairs, and the negotiations conducted under their direction. 
Various inconveniences arose from this arrangement, and our 
agents abroad " frequently complained that their despatches 
were not answered, and that they were embarrassed for want 



38 



of intelligence." In consequence of this, in 1781 the committee 
was dissolved, and the foreign correspondence placed under the 
control of a Secretary of Foreign Affairs, to which office Robert 
R. Livingston was appointed. When he came into the office, 
says the preface to the official publication of this correspondence, 
" a salutary change took place. His letters are numerous, full, 
and instructive." This too, it must be remembered, was during 
the most important period of our foreign relations, when the 
negotiations were pending which led to the first treaties with 
the powers of the European continent acknowledging our inde- 
pendence — -when the first loans were negotiated abroad on the 
credit of our new government — and finally, when the definitive 
treaty of peace with Great Britain was settled and signed, after 
many delays and difficulties. 

NOTE III. 

Col. John Stevens, of Hoboken, a graduate of 1768, is now 
one of the oldest living Alumni of this college. His agency in 
the invention, introduction, and gradual improvement of steam- 
boats, from the early and imperfect experiments made upon the 
Hudson and Delaware, between 1785 and 1800 up to the admi- 
rable mechanism and models of the boats now constructed 
and owned by his sons, is well known to all who have paid 
any attention to the history of steam navigation ; and had not 
the plan of this address excluded any honours to the living, 
it would have claimed a distinguished place in these pages. 
I cannot, however, pass over this opportunity of noticing 
another less known claim of this venerable and patriotic 
citizen to public gratitude, in another instance in which his 
enlightened science anticipated the progress of improvement. 
There is no subject which is now likely to occupy a larger por- 
tion of the capital, enterprize, and useful science both of this 
country and Europe, than the use of rail-roads. But many 
years before their adoption and use upon any extensive scale, 
and long before the combination of steam-carriages with them 



39 

had been suggested elsewhere, Col. Stevens addressed a memoir 
to the Canal Commissioners of New-York, then engaged in the 
preparatory surveys for the Erie and Champlain canals, wherein 
he pointed out and explained the practicability and advantages 
of rail-roads upon the largest possible scale. This, with the 
correspondence with De Witt Clinton, R. R. Livingston, and 
Gouverneur Morris, which resulted from it, he published in 
1812, under the title of " Documents tending to prove the su- 
perior advantages of rail-ways and steam-carriages over canal- 
navigation." 

In 1819, he again brought this subject before the public in 
another and modified form. I then represented the city and 
county of New-York in the state Legislature, and was a mem- 
ber of the committee upon canals and internal improvement ; 
in consequence of which I had the honour of presenting an ela- 
borate and able memorial from Col. Stevens, in which he again 
stated and explained the advantages of this mode of transporta- 
tion, with all the additional lights which the experience of eight 
years had afforded, and recommended to the Legislature the 
combining of rail-roads with the great system of internal im- 
provement in which the state was then ardently engaged. He 
was, however, still too far in advance of the times ; and though 
the memorial received a respectful reference, and was ordered 
to be printed for the use of the Legislature and distribution, it 
led at that time to no immediate practical result, though it was 
probably the germ of some of the useful private enterprizes 
of this nature now in progress. 



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